Dr. Robin Schoenthaller, the Boston Cancer Doc Who Writes About Covid

 *phew* Finally caught up!

This is my interview with Dr. Robin Schoenthaller, the Boston Cancer Doc Who Writes About Covid.  (And has the longest name in the history of IMHO.) (Here's her Facebook, which has most of her Covid related articles.) This is playing directly from my Mixcloud, because YouTube pulled the video for "Medical Misinformation" which is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what we are doing here, according to YouTube OWN STANDARDS.

1) Get vaccinated

2) Masks work

3) Dr. Anthony Fauci is a credible expert who was right about everything, according to the best information available at every given point in time.

4) Same goes for the CDC, WHO, etc...

If you DISAGREE with any of those statement, the YOU, my friend, would be in violation of YouTube's community standards. (So take it up with them.) But I AGREE with them. And somehow still got the video blocked. But they can't silence me: Here I am, and here it is.

And we're going to have a talk about YouTube's arbitrary and capricious enforcement of their Community Standards.

My reply to Duta

(Ed Note: This started out as my reply to poster Duta's comment under my last post.  It got too long, so I put it here.  I'll let it serve as a lead-in to some of the stuff that Steve pasted way back that I wanted to re-visit.)

Duta,

What I have seen countless times, from my own personal experience, is that THE TRUTH in any situation depends almost entirely on ones own point of view. And I think this is a pretty good example of that. You imply a lack of humility on my part for my lack of belief. And you may have a legitimate point, from your point of view. There are a couple of things I would like to point out. The truth, if you will, from my point of view.

First of all... I DO NOT "refuse to believe in a higher power." What I DO is reject the models that have proposed to me so far, all of which I find to be completely lacking in humility, I might add, and engender a most undeserved certainty - especially in their belief in things that are DEMONSTRABLY false.

Now... Do I believe in a "higher power?" Yes. Believe it or not I DO. Is it the same as yours? No, most assuredly not. It the same as ANYONE else's? No, probably not. Not that I've seen so far anyway. But, as I was implying in linking to Prof. Carrol's section on Atheism, Atheism is not the POSITIVE BELIEF in the NON-EXISTENCE of a higher power. It is not as you put it, a REFUSAL to believe. I do not BELIEVE in the existence of "God" as the concept has so far been defined. What I've heard so far falls into the category of either completely absurd, or reasonable, but not very meaningful. In any case NOT BELIEVING in the existence of God is not the same thing as BELIEVING God does not exist.

Which bring me to the OTHER part of this...

As I wrote a while back, regarding "miracles" If "God" is showing humanity any "favor" at all, why does it always seem to be in countries who do more medical research, who have more medical and scientific resources and who have the most money?

Answer: Because it is SCIENCE, not "faith," "god," or any other kind of "magic" that conquered Infant Mortality, Small Pox, Infections, Polio, Pertussis, Measles, Malaria, etc... It is SCIENCE, not GOD who turned Diabetes into a disease that you can live with indefinitely, and is making strides and doing the same for Cancer, Aids and many others. Open-Heart Surgery, Pre-Natal Surgery, Organ Transplants, Artificial Limbs, Artificial Organs... These are the result of SCIENCE and MANKIND'S LABOR and DISCOVERY. NOT God. Until we discovered these things? GOD was keen to let 50% of Children DIE in infancy. God was keen to strike people down in the prime of life, out of the blue, Healthy on Monday, dead on Wednesday, by the MILLIONS, whether they went to church or not. 

It was once believed that lighting strikes were the will of God.  And "He" seemed to destroy countless man-made structures with this display of his "power." Funny how a simple, grounded, Iron rod rendered this awesome power completely harmless, no?  We will do the same with everything else.  I have no doubt of that, all it will take is TIME and KNOWLEDGE yet to  be discovered.  You say we're helpless? I'm not buying it. If we were ever helpless it was when we HAD no science, and ALL we had was "God." If that was God's plan? I have news for you: WE'RE WINNING.

Anti-Biotics, Chemotherapy, etc... Have the same success and failure rate regardless of ones religion, and no attempt to show the benefit of "prayer," independent of other factors has even succeeded. (Hey - without Medical Care, PRAYER alone will KILL YOU, and I can find hundreds of examples of THAT, just ask!) BELIEF maybe, but it's also been shown that BELIEF helps regardless of WHAT you believe IN!  So... hardly evidence of the power of any ONE God.

And the way I see it? If there is a higher power, that is exactly what it's plan was from the start. There is no doubt in my mind that this "higher power" has no interest in interfering with what goes on down here. There IS no "grand plan" as far as I'm concerned. If we become the masters of our environment, and live together in peace and flourish? Then we are a success. And we die waging war, allowing famine or chasing superstition instead of science? Then we have FAILED. And we deserve our fate, having brought it on ourselves.  In short I don't reject the entire IDEA of a higher power, just every one I've been presented with so far. And I do so, because (as I laid out in that earlier piece) to do otherwise, to believe in "miracles" would imply that I believe that God is evil.

Believe me... It is very much for my children's benefit that I put my "faith" in Scientific medicine, even as it currently has very little to offer with regards to autism. What it DOES offer WORKS, and that it is lacking in so many areas is not license for anyone to come along and simply propose ANYTHING. And those that do? Have IN EVERY SINGLE CASE been exposed as frauds (after money) at best, and DANGEROUS at worst - children have DIED because their parents have put their faith is non-scientific "treatments." I will never do that, and I have no problem at all condemning those who do. These "faith healers" and other pseudo-medical charlatans who've had patients DIE who could have been helped by standard medicine, should be in JAIL.

For the sake of my children, my faith is in science. For the sake of ALL MANKIND, my faith is in science and will remain such. As I have said many times, and will say in my next post, in Reply to Steeve, I see no good coming from RELIGION moving forward. And it hardly due to arrogance on my part. It has everything to do with the arrogance of Religion itself.

It is RELIGION I reject. NOT the mere idea of a higher power.

Thanks for your comment.

Another failure of free-market economics and health care...

By now y'all are well aware of my disadain of the for-profit, free-market model of health care.

Here's another example of just how utterly uselss it is.  The same kind of thing applies to rare diseases.  Get a disease that "only" kills a few hundered people a year?  Well, sucks to be unprofitable you.

What wrong with the NIH? Depends on your point of view.

I just read an interesting article in Newsweek about why so many scientific discoveries aren't advancing medicine to the point of having more cures for things. Now as an engineer - someone who turns science into something practical for a living - the very idea of all this science going to waste is truly depressing. That it happens because of the very system designed to prevent it is even more depressing.

And that's what makes this so interesting: The TRUTH of the matter depending on one's point of view.

Now... the clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because only a great fool would reach for what he was given...

Sorry, wrong argument. But truly I have a dizzying intellect; Just wait 'til I get going! Now where was? Oh yeah...

Back to the article... In reading this, I just keep hearing the voice of every conservative I know saying, "See? The Government gets involved and they just screw everything up!" And they'd have point, at least as far as a very shallow analysis will reveal. But in my opinion - a liberal's opinion - the answer is clear: The government needs to get MORE involved and this is yet another dismal failure for the power of the free market!

The basic problem is this: NIH grants don't cover the research & grunt work needed to determine if a discovery can be made into a usable drug (for example.) This is because the NIH is meant to fund SCINECE not FOR-PROFIT drug making. See: It's a system he has FAITH in the free market's ability to pick up where the basic science leaves off. It stays out of the way, and let's those big Pharma companies take care of the investment in return for keeping all of the profits. Trouble is...the Pharmaceutical companies, big and small, don't want to invest in ANYTHING that isn't reasonably certain to be commercially viable. (And given the costs, who can blame them?) And... you can't know that without doing the necessary - and both rather unglamorous and unprofitable - research to determine it! (Has everyone read Catch-22? Good.)

So strike down one more for the free market, and give one more point to those who think that we need MORE government spending, not less and MORE government involvement in medicine and not less, and MORE medical research, NOT LESS. 

(And yes that includes stem cells.)

Anti- Anti-Vaxxer Movement Rant

I know, I know. I promised one about energy.  I'll get to it, I swear.  But I HAD to tap this first.

I came accross THIS which was linked to by Skeptic Dictionary (my bible.)  It's a fantastic write up absolutely skewring the anti-vaccinemovmenet and their blatant intellectual dishonesty.  I'm coming to the realization that one of the reason I like MMFA so much is not just that it's liberal - after all, there are TONS of good, well-written liberals sites and blogs out there, and I don't spend half as much time on all of them put together!  But, what MMFA essentially focus on is the Right's intellectual dishonesty. THAT'S at the core of thearguments they make, and that kind of argument really appeals to me.

Now... I don't see the Anti-Vaxxer movement or Alternatve Medicine in General to be a partisan or a poltical problem.  In fact there are elements of both Conservtaive Anti-Science (Faith Healing, for example) and Liberal Anti-Science (Product liability, anti-corporate/big-Pharma fears) in all areas of 'Alternative Medicine.'  So honestly, I don't give a fig about the politics behind this psudeo-scientific nonsense.  Liberal or Conservative, right or left, My feelings on this, as with all matters scientific, are very simple:

"Alternative Medicine" is just another way of saying "Stuff that doesn't pass scientific muster or double-blind clinical testing." IWO: Bullshit.  And Skepdic has dozens of articles in it that do a better job tearing down this nonsense down than I even want to try.  But whatever, as long as you're not denying your children life saving medicine, opting for prayer instead - which is a nice way of saying, "MURDERING YOUR CHILDREN"- then I really don't care what you waste your money on, as long as you don't try to put into some kind of National Health Plan that MY TAX MONEY pays for.  Barring that?  Buy all the placebos you want.

But the Anti-Vaxxer movement is DANGEROUS.  Hundereds of children have DIED in this country alone and infectuous diseases that were once considered extinct in the developed world are now on the rise again in many countries.

1) As far as I'm concerned, Jenny McCarthy, as the public face (Josesh Goebels) of anti-vaxxer propaganda, shares the same proportion of blame for the 505 deaths that occured between June, 2007 and March 2010 as one might attribute to Goebles for the holocaust.  She's facing 505 counts of accessory to MURDER as far as I'm concerned.

2) If you, as a parent, have chosen not to vaccinate your child, and do not have a DIAGNOSABLE, SCIENCE-BASED, MEDICAL REASON for doing so: YOU ARE A BAD PARENT.  And if your childeren become ill and/or die, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE.

3) As the father of two autistic boys I can say this no more plainly:

•  If your autistic child has unvaccinated younger sibilings, YOU ARE A BAD PARENT. 
• If you have wasted you money on any number of unproven therapies you are not only a FOOL, you are a BAD PARENT for diverting resources that should have been spent paying for SPEECH THERAPY, and possibly SCIENCE BASED medication.
• If you have exposed your child to RISKY, unproven practices such as Chealation?  If I had my druthers I'd take those kids away from you, put you in jail, and put in jail the QUACK and FRAUD of a physician that prescribed and/or carried it out.  (And one already has: in PA, for manslaughter.  If I had been on that jury, I would have gladly gone as high as 'murder in the first' for anyone carrying out deadly experiments on handicapped children.)

Science based medicine, is the ONLY medicine.  Anything else is nonsense.  No better than a bunch of stuff I just make up out of the blue. 

The Health Care Bill

Things have been busy at work the past couple weeks (the car makers must be making up for last year!) and I've hardly had any time to put my two-cents in over of MMFA lately. (Which is a good thing: in this economy, and in Michigan of all places, I'd rather have too little time on my hands than too much! LOL) So I was really rushed in this thread, so I wanted to come back and put my piece on the table regarding the pending health care legislation...

...and I don't suppose too many people, on either side of the issue, will like what I have to say about it. So let put a few "givens" out there, right up front.

1) I HATE insurance companies.  We all know the multitude of ways that they screw people over, and I'm no different. My story?  My two sons have autism.  The insurance company paid for the diagnosis, but the minute they "autism" label was stuck on them, they wouldn't pay for shit in terms of therapy. (I came across THIS once, and it really hit home.) You know... Cause they don't get any better.  (1) First of all: tell that to Temple Grandin.  (2) Second of all, neither do AIDS patients or Diabetics or Schizophrenics or Transplant Patients or a million other patients who are on medication or medical therapy for life.  But we all know that they'll throw any bullshit they can at you just to get out of paying.  It doesn't have to be logical, scientifically correct or even make sense.  They hold all the cards, so you're at their mercy.

So if anyone things I'm in the pocket of the insurance industry, I dare you to say it my face.  (And I'd then advise you to them DUCK.) I HATE. HATE. HATE. those scum-sucking bastards.  They turned their backs on my kids.  So fuck 'em.

2) The Right, the Conservatives, The Republicans, the Insurance Lobby and Fox have all told so many lies about this whole issue, that I really don't even care what they have to say anymore. (I never really did, but it's less than background noise now.)  They're so far out in Right Field it's not even funny anymore. It's pathetic and sad.  Death Panels? Lie of the year.  Deficits? Lie of the day, just depends on the issue you're discussing.  Government Takeover? I only WISH.  And I swear I'm going to punch the next person I hear crying about "socialism."  So this in not, in any way, intended to argue with the idiots on the Right.  90% of them have no fucking idea what they're talking about, and the other 10% are lying for their paychecks.  And even if every concession was given to them (and it basically has) they'd oppose it even if their own mother's life depended on it, just to see Obama and the Democrats "lose."  They're despicable bastards without heart, soul or brains.  So I'm done with them.

I want to take issue with the LIBERALS, who at this point are ready to jump ship on it.


Now... don't get me wrong.  IMHO, the only PRINCIPLED, EDUCATED opposition to this bill, and anything in it has come from the Left.  And I've laid out my own plan, which is about as close as you can get to single-payer, and yet not have the gov't run it, and still use market forces to keep costs DOWN, rather than UP as they do now.  So you know I'm no libertarian when it comes to this issue.  All that being said, in my humble opinion...

THIS IS IMPORTANT LEGISLATION.  THIS IS GOOD LEGISLATION. AND THIS COUNTRY NEEDS IT TO PASS. NOW.

I can't remember where I read it (and it may have been in this blog, so please forgive me if it was you and I forgot) but I recently read where someone call Health Care Reform the "New Deal" of our generation, and went on to call Gay Rights the "Civil Rights Movement" of our generation.  I absolutely agree, 100% with that analogy, and that is exactly what drives my thinking here:  The New Deal was not a single piece of legislation.  Neither was 'Civil Rights.'  Both represented sweeping changes in HOW WE THINK.  They represented paradigm shifts in out whole legal, economic, political and social philosophy.  They both occurred over MANY bills, MANY laws, and even MANY court cases, both in support of and in opposition to. And there was no point at which ANY single piece of legislation SOLVED THE PROBLEM. (We still have both economic instability and racial issues today, after all, and we probably will 100 years from now.)  So you could take ANY piece of legislation, in either of those two cases - the first, the last or any in between - and find some fault with it.  It doesn't go far enough.  It makes too many concessions.  It makes things worse.  But just as well, in each case, each step had to be taken, as it was, because at each stage they had to take what they could get and keep moving forward.

And that's where I part with the idealists on the Left: I'm a pragmatist.  Do I agree with Michael Moore, and Keith Olbermann and Dennis Kuccinich?  In principal? Yes.  But in practice, I do not accept the conclusion that this bill makes things worse.

Will the insurance companies profit from this? Yes, I'm sure they'll find a way to. They always do.
(I don't mind that they make a profit. What bothers me is that the currently profit more by denying care. That's the dysfunctional incentive.)

Will some people remain uncovered? Yep.  A good 20 Million as I understand it.
(That's still half what it is now, however.)

Do I like the individual mandate? Not without a public option I don't.
(But whether or not it's constitutional, is a matter for the courts to decide, not a reason to oppose it.)

BUT...  I also see this bill as a NECESSARY first step.  We'd all like single-payer.  Wasn't going to happen. Personally, I prefer MY PLAN.  Not going to happen. (Wasn't even on the table. LOL)  Public Option? Might have happened, if Harry Reid had any balls, Nancy Pelosi was worth a damn and President Obama wasn't the pragmatist that I figured him for when I voted for him, despite the Right's attempts to brand his as the most moon-bat liberal homo-sapient of all time.  And while I'd certainly have have liked it, maybe even participated in it, I can live without it, even with the individual mandate.

Why?

Pre-existing conditions.  If you want to force them to cover pre-exsisting conditions, (and we need to, with everyone switching jobs, getting laid off, etc...) and not let them totally jack up the premiums to cover them, and you DON'T want your costs to skyrocket, the only way to achieve that is to have EVERYONE pay-in.  You need healthy people who right now, whether by choice or by circumstance, aren't putting in to ante up and get covered.  And to all you wanna-be micro-economics majors out there, this is yet another instance where market forces work in strange ways.  You see... It doesn't cost more to COVER more people.  COVERING PEOPLE is a source of REVENUE.  The increased demand for coverage does not necessarily lead to higher costs.  What increases costs is more (and more expensive) CLAIMS being filed.  Does universal coverage lead to more, and more expensive, claims?  On average, per person, not really.

Remember - this gets a lot of currently HEALTHY people on board.  That will only LOWER the [insurance company's] cost, on a per person basis.  And all those uninsured SICK people?  As I laid out in my earlier health care posts, right now they wait until their on death's door and then show up in the ER.  And they then run up HUGE bills, that then don't get paid.  Well, first of all: Guess who pays them? WE DO, though higher premiums, as hospitals try to recoup unpaid bills by soaking insurance companies!  They don't just write it off, and even if they do officially, they still try to recoup it from US - the insured.  Second of all, if these same people were covered, they'd go to the doctor EARLY ON, when [whatever it is that they have] can be fixed CHEAPLY and EASILY, with FEWER COMPLICATIONS and better PATIENT OUTCOMES.  Which is exactly what we WANT THEM TO DO because it COST LESS THAT WAY!  It's ALWAYS costs more, not to mention has more negative outcomes, to treat a disease in the later stages.  It's ALWAYS better, and cheaper, to catch it and treat it EARLY. So the idea that we'll be paying for something that we're not already is misguided, no matter what model you're looking at.

Is this bill perfect? No.  No way.  Is it even good? Debatable, certainly.  But is it NECESSARY?

Yes.  I firmly believe it is.

And to some extent the details don't matter. (And I realize there are some doozies.)  This will not solve all of our problems, but neither would a public option and neither would even single payer.  But about the only idea I've heard that would make it WORSE was John McCain's '08 campaign idea to let people buy across state lines.  THAT, and some of the more "free market" solutions I've heard, would make it WORSE. Much worse. And I just don't believe this bill does.  Not in  any BIG PICTURE kind of way.  It has it's warts, but at this point, and really at any point, we need to take what we can get, celebrate the victory, and move on to the NEXT STEP.  Because whoever succeeds Obama, and whenever that happens, will STILL be dealing with health care.  No matter WHAT happens, or even might have happened with this bill.

I actually, honestly believe that we'll get to single payer eventually (though still I prefer my own model.)  But we're not going to get there in one bill. (Shit, we might not get there in my lifetime!) This will be, and has to be a gradual process.  And the necessary FIRST STEP, really the first two steps, has/have to be:

1) Everyone needs to put it / Nobody is allowed to opt out.  (And help the ones who truly can't afford it.)


2) The insurance companies can't be allowed to refuse anyone, and can't be allowed to gouge anyone.

Now... we're not there yet. But this bill brings us closer.  And we can't get on with the REAL reforms until we've achieved those first two steps.  And come November?  It's likely the Republicans will make some gains, and the already uphill climb will only get steeper.  We need to take what we can.  We need to start moving in the right direction.  We need to get the ball rolling.  And we need to do this as soon as we can.

We NEED this legislation, warts and all.  I don't LIKE it... but I do believe it's necessary.

Revisiting Healthcare

Awhile back I agrued the there was some wisdom in philosophical conservatism.  Of course, I went on to demostrate how most of this wisodm is missing from the modern American Conservative movement... But I also think that there are exceptions to the darwinian idea that wheatever we have now must be good, since it has withstood all competing ideas and mdoels and has emerged though a process of competition and survival of the fittest.  The most glaring example of this, IMHO, is our health care system. 

Rather than something that has competed whole cloth against alternative models, our current health care system is a band-aided-all-to-hell version of a system that was inherently flawed form the start, but which conservatives have not let us meaingfully reform.  So over the years, rather than evolve, our system has instead mutated sprouting arms and legs as needed to fill one more role until, in the end, we're left with an ungangly mess of appendages that NO ONE would have concieved naturally, if they just sat down one day to design a health care system with the laudable goal of providing universal care.

If someone had presented me with the following, as their initial proposal for a system, I'd ask them if they joking, and have them fired on the spot if the said, "No."  This is my interpretation of what that might have looked like, given how our system has ended up looking like:

Just LOOK at this mess!  FYI: The Blue Arrow represents CARE.  My Doctor provides me with care.  Green Arrows represent PAYMENT: I currenltly pay out to (1) my doctor, (2) my insurance comapny, (3) my employer and (4) the government, who is also paid by my employer.  Doctors recieve payments from three different sources: Me, the Insurace Companies and the Governement.  Insurance companies are also paid from three sources: Me, my employer and the Government.  Then you have the Red Arrows.  These represent RED TAPE or DA RULZ.  Governement tells (in far too few cases, I might add) the insurance companies how to operate as well as any doctors, who collect medicare/medicaid payments. (And this is not even considering standards of care, regulating safety, the FDA, etc... I'm only considering the PAYMENT side of things here!)  Insurance companies make the doctors jump through hoops to get paid, and also create all kinds of red tape for their customers, just to justify not paying out or not covering them in the first place.  In addition, because of their involvement, my company gets to dictate all kinds of stuff to me.  A couple of gems that my company madnates:  We have to declare our non-use of any tobacco products or else face a $50.00 insurance surcharge.  And don't think for a minute that the insurance company's are giving us non-smokers a break. (Yeah right!) Even if they were, I'm not sure the $2 a month I'm saving is worth the invasion of privacy.  (And lying on this form is grounds for termination!) What's more, if you have a working spouse that qualifies for benefits under her employer's health care plan, the s/he MUST be insured with them, otherwise you'll pay an additional premium to inusre your spouse under our plan.  Yes, it's already more to insure a spouse, so why the hell should it be EVEN MORE just be she'sotehrwise insurable?!  Insuring a spouse ALREADY costs more! WTF?

Bottom line, you shouldn't have to pay out to (or get paid by) three or more different entities and you shouldn't have red-tape going in every direction.  None of this complexity is necessary or has anything to do with providing health care.  And it doesn't even WORK!  We're the wealthiest nation in the world, with health care RESOURCES to spare, and yet tens thousands die (or declare bankrupcy?!) every year from lack of coverage! And even putting that aside, NO ONE, if tasked to design a health care system form the gound up, would have come up with anything like this monstrosity right form the start. No way. It's like... if you asked someone to design the perfect household pet, chances are they come up with something simple, like a dog or a cat.  There's basicaly no way they'd invision something resembling some sort of land-based octopus with five mouths.

By comparison, here is the same chart, based on what I proposed with my own health care plan:

See how simple this is?  The Gov't creates the policy. A UNIVERSAL health insurance policy with little or ideally no out-of-pocket expense to me. Everyone is covered the same way: Completely. They pay for it with increased taxes (from me and my employer), but the increase in taxes is offset by none of us having to pay insurance premiums or other health care costs out of pocket.  They then contract and pay the insurance companies to manage it, negotiate prices with doctors, etc... Insurance companies pay the doctors and the doctors give me care.  There. Done. Simple.  And if you read my original post, and the few follow-up posts I think you'll see that market forces are harnessed in functional ways that keeps costs low, using good old fashioned competion, in a way that guarentees universal care, rather than promising more profit the more people get refused coverage.

Now... I'm not saying this MUST be the BEST plan EVER, but thus far I have not seen one that's really made me think, "Yeah, that could work too!"  Not even truly single payer.  (The laws of Microeconomic[supply and demand] guarentee that true single payer will always either have shortages or cost more than it needs to.)  Based on what we have as far as resources, THIS is how I'd have it work.  And depending on your POV, it's both more conservtive than single payer, or even medicare/medicaid and yet more radical that anything being proposed by congress.  And it's sustainable.

But it would never pass.  It just make too much sense!